SOLUTIONS: A Former CIA Analyst's Plan to Stop America's Scam Epidemic

Episode 43: Ken Westbrook shares how his mother got him into fighting scams, the challenge in measuring the scale of scams, and the actions the U.S. needs to take to better fight scams.

When Ken Westbrook's elderly mother was targeted by a phantom hacker scam, he did what any former CIA analyst would do — he investigated. What he found shocked him: hundreds of billions of dollars draining from American pockets each year, flowing directly to transnational organized crime, and no one in the federal government in charge of stopping it.

In this episode of Stolen, Erin West sits down with Ken Westbrook, founder of Stop Scams Alliance, to talk solutions. Ken lays out a concrete three-step plan to turn the tide: a White House coordinator for fraud modeled after drug policy reform, a national data fusion center inspired by NCMEC, and stronger authentication standards for financial ads online. They also dig into the most comprehensive scam survey ever conducted — a Gallup study that will finally give policymakers the data they need to act.

America is losing this fight because we're not organized. Ken Westbrook has a plan to change that.

Stolen is hosted by Erin West, former Santa Clara County prosecutor and founder of Operation Shamrock.

Learn more about Operation Shamrock: operationshamrock.org

Meet Our Sponsors

BioCatch prevents financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting 3,000 anonymized data points – keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, physical device attributes, and more – as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's models reveal patterns that distinguish the criminal from the legitimate.

Scamnetic is a leader in AI-powered scam detection and prevention, protecting individuals, businesses, and financial institutions from digital scams. With solutions like KnowScam and IDeveryone, Scamnetic delivers real-time scam insights, identity verification, and intervention. Restoring trust, reducing losses, and empowering organizations to safeguard customers in an increasingly complex digital world.